Social Media & Society Conference July 2016, London, UK

Scholars' Imagined Audiences and their Impact on Social Media Participation

George Veletsianos, PhD Canada Research Chair & Associate Professor

Royal Roads University Victoria, BC

Ash Shaw

Royal Roads University & University of British Columbia Victoria, BC & Vancouver BC

Networked Scholarship, or Networked Participatory Scholarship:

“scholars’ use of participatory technologies and online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and further their scholarship” (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012)

•  A non-deterministic perspective

A bit of theory: Networked Scholarship

Overview: How do you imagine your social media audience(s)?

How do you imagine your social media audience(s)?

Motivation

Imagined audiences: “mental conceptualization of the people with whom we are communicating” (Litt, 2012) Imagined audiences shape social media practices (Marwick & boyd, 2011). This phenomenon is largely unexplored in relation to scholars’ social media practices

Relevant Literature

How do imagined audiences affect social media users? •  Marwick & boyd (2011): Some consciously tweet

to cultivate a persona. Others reported tweeting “for themselves.”

•  Brake (2012): most considered a specific audience of friends and family when deciding what to blog

•  Litt (2015): ~1/2 had a specific audience in mind. For the rest: audience = more indefinite/abstract.

Relevance to academics/faculty?

Academics are increasingly using social media and are frequently encouraged to develop a social media presence

Research Questions

We examined •  how do scholars conceptualize their audiences

when participating on social media?

•  how does this conceptualization shape the ways in which they participate and express themselves online?

Methods

•  Interviews •  Invited 5 bloggers, posted invitations on personal

blogs/FB/Twitter channels, snowball sampling •  42 completed a consent form •  16 interviewed

•  Transcripts analyzed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967)

•  Limitations: 1-time interviews, sample representativeness

Participants

Age: 29 - 57 (mean = 41.6; S.D = 8.1; median = 40.5). 12 self-identified as F, 3 as M, & 1 as transgender. Education or educational technology (10), humanities (3), social sciences exclusive of education (2), and nursing (1). Lived in the United States (8), Canada (3), the United Kingdom (3), Australia (1), and Egypt (1).

Results: How do they conceptualize their audiences?

Identified 4 specific (at times overlapping) groups: •  academics, •  family and friends, •  groups related to one’s profession, •  individuals who shared commonalities with them. Incompatibility between certain groups à When seen as problematic (context collapse). Solution: attempt to keep audiences separate à At times, seen as potentially beneficial Solution: allow contexts to collapse [“context collusion” – Davis & Jurgenson, 2014]

Results: How do they conceptualize their audiences?

Known vs. Unknown Known: Individuals known personally and well (online & offline) Unknown: Audiences that scholars understood but knew little about. Strategies used to gain understanding of audience: •  examining hashtags followers used •  identifying when followers followed them •  (limited use of) social network analysis

Results: How does audience conceptualization impact participation?

Scholars used their understanding of their audience

to guide their decisions around what to

share & where to share such information.

Results: How does audience conceptualization impact participation?

Filtering Motivated by concerns around how posting would reflect on themselves or others. Filtering took a number of forms, most frequently: •  Avoiding posting something for fear of offending

or alienating others •  Posting to a particular platform (eg FB pereived

more personal than Twitter) or audience •  Conscious of tone, language, and emotion •  Controversial topics: political views, sexuality,

social justice, and religion.

Implications 1/2

Previous research: social media users are not concerned about their audience’s reaction to posts This study: all participants concerned & make conscious decisions about restricting/amending posts

Implications 2/2

Previous research: Identified misalignment between actual and imagined audiences This study: identifies misalignment between the audiences scholars imagine and the audiences institutions imagine their scholars encountering.

Conclusion

Recognizing that scholars participating online are not merely disembodied personas aiming to amass citations and followers can enable researchers to make better sense of the negotiated relationship between digital audiences and scholars.

Thank you!

Research available at:

http://www.veletsianos/publications

This presentation:

www.slideshare.com/veletsianos

Contact:

veletsianos@gmail.com @veletsianos on Twitter

Audience https://flic.kr/p/5YxihJ

Audience @ LeWeb 11 Les Docks-9306 https://flic.kr/p/aUh4TP Audience https://flic.kr/p/8HxA8E

Family https://flic.kr/p/oF8Hd2

Colleagues https://flic.kr/p/7xEgDw Nightmare - 10 https://flic.kr/p/cLzoCj

146a Diplo and Skrillex at Burning Man 2014 Opulent Temple - https://flic.kr/p/oZH672

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